


Finding More Than You Bargained For

by RegalMisfortune



Series: The World is Painted in Hymns from Lips of Mere Strangers [5]
Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Demons, Gen, Magic, Rasmodius doesn't deal with visitors well especially the human kind, Spirits, im in the halloween mood whoops, is a stand-alone piece so you can read as you like, the many young adults go to check in on the supernatural and get more than they bargained for, this is definitely better than the other short thing i did, vague mention of nudity? idk spirits man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-17 01:08:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12354276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RegalMisfortune/pseuds/RegalMisfortune
Summary: Rasmodius wanted a quiet autumn night. Instead, he has several of Pelican Town's young adults lurking outside his window because they wanted to prove, once in for all, if magic existed or not.Starring: Abigail as adventurous maiden, Sebastian as hopeful skeptic, Maru as confirmed science guru, Sam as supposed comedic relief, and Alex as the guy who was brought along to fight the monster and give the others a chance to escape (but be the first to run in an actual encounter). Also Featuring: Rasmodius the Wizard/Hermit, unidentified spirit/demon, and Utu the Junimo.





	Finding More Than You Bargained For

**Author's Note:**

> c: 
> 
> If you have any questions or requests, feel free to talk to me on my [tumblr!](http://regalmisfortune.tumblr.com/)

There was no need for any sort of magic to know that Rasmodius was receiving company.

He let out a sigh as he set down his cup of homemade tea, the sound of stomping feet and not-so-subtle whispering loud just outside his window. It seemed that his guests decided to climb up the short cliff to his tower home instead of simply walking around to the path, but then again they may have missed it entirely in the moonless twilight.

The wizard tilted his head, a pop in his neck causing a small breath of relief to escape his throat before he rose from his chair and moved towards the coatrack by the door to don on his cloak in a swirl of fabric. It was better to see what they were up to than letting them snoop around and perhaps cause even more mischief, as groups were harder to handle than individuals, not with their pack-like mentality.

It was comically easy to materialize behind them, mostly hidden in the shadows casted by the soft glow of the windows. The small group of five outside didn’t even notice, too busy hissing whispers at each other as they crouched just below the sill to notice their additional member, twigs and leaves clinging to some stray parts of their coats and jackets that combated the increasing autumn chill.

“This is stupid,” Sebastian muttered, the slight twitch of his fingers giving away the fact that he was craving for a smoke but resisting in favor of grumbling. “He’s just some weird old codger who lives in an old pile of rubble, Abby.”

“I have to agree to some extent,” Maru voiced her opinion beside her older half-brother, although her nose wrinkled slightly. “It’s rude to call people names, but magic doesn’t exist.”

“It does _too_!” Abigail hissed, before nudging Sam in the small of his back with a finger. “Go look in the window to see he’s there!”

“Why do _I_ have to look?”

“Because you’re up front, genius.”

“This place gives me the creeps,” Alex spoke up for the first time from his position in the rear of the group, looking pale and uncomfortable in the faint light. “We should just leave.”

“Come on, Alex, where’s your sense of adventure?” Abigail rolled her eyes. “Besides, _someone’s_ gotta fight off the monsters while the rest of us run for our lives.”

“That’s not reassuring, Abigail.”

“Do you children know what time it is?”

As soon as Rasmodius spoke up, several actions happened at once. Alex let out a surprising high-pitched squeak and jerked forward away from the source of his shock, ramming into Sebastian, who fell face first into Maru who toppled to the ground with an undignified yelp. Abigail cursed something foul and spun around, smacking Sam hard in the legs in the process which caused him to lose balance and nearly tip backwards off the narrow gap between his home and the edge of the short cliff.

Rasmodius merely quirked an eyebrow at them.

“ _Dude_!” Sam managed to say, his words a little breathless as he brought a hand to his chest. “What the _hell_?”

“We’re so, so sorry!” Maru, ever the apologetic, butted in before anyone else could say anything. “We didn’t mean-“

“They don’t believe you’re _really_ a wizard!” Abigail exclaimed, getting a soft reproach of _“Abigail!”_ from Maru. “Maru’s all science, Sebastian’s a hopeful skeptic, and Sam’s here for comedic relief!”

“Hey!”

“Oh, and we brought Alex along because we couldn’t say no to Granny and she caught us trying to sneak out of town without any of the adults finding out.”

Rasmodius pinched the bridge of his nose, taking in a slow, deep breath. He had observed enough of the townsfolk to know that this was exactly what Abigail would do, considering the girl kept appearing around his tower during the warmer months. He usually ignored her and went about his day, but it seemed that her unbridled sense of curiosity and adventure had led her right to his doorstep with her friends and other peers.

Just like her mother in her youth, in that regard.

He pushed the thought away as he dropped his hand to his side, casting one look over the group before giving in. He could play nice- regardless of the gentle heckling of his north-eastern neighbor beyond Marnie’s Ranch in the ways of making more friends.

“Well, you better come in to warm up. Last thing I need is for your guardians to get upset when you all catch a cold.”

Abigail positively beamed, taking hold of Sam and Sebastian’s wrists as the wizard swept past them and around the front to let them in through the door. He ignored their gawking as he went about finding whatever clean cups he had left to set them up with some tea like the reasonable host he _could_ be.

“Are those real?” Alex’s voice, somewhat shakily inquired, his eyes fixated on the wall lined with jars filled with pickled creatures that he typically saved for certain occasions.

“You know having any remains of a Blue-Shell Snail is illegal without a permit, right?” Maru added next, peering at the jar with a particularly large specimen of said snail. “They’re almost extinct.”

Rasmodius had a lot of words on the tip of his tongue in response, about how guests shouldn’t criticize their hosts’ homes, about children sticking their noses into business it didn’t belong in. Instead he set the tea down on a table with the least amount of scrolls and artifacts and sat down with his own cup of tea, now lukewarm and bitter without uttering a word in that regard.

Instead, he took a sip from his mug, not even looking up as he spoke from just above the rim of the ceramic.

“If you favor your fingers being intact, I’d suggest not touching that.”

He heard Sam quickly shuffle back from the unused sigil on the raised dias, nearly knocking over one of the melted-down candles- thankfully unlit.

“Er… sorry.”

Rasmodius had to be thankful that he had cleaned up the first floor from the usual mess. There wasn’t anything particularly dangerous, per se, but there were still things that could cause mental and physical trauma if one was careless. Nothing too significant- they would get over it in a year or so.

“Why is this tea so _yellow_?” Abigail asked, happily taking a seat at the table and peering into her chosen mug with fascination.

“It’s made with Gene’s Whiskers,” he replied simply, which made Maru jerk her head up.

“Aren’t they poisonous?” she asked, causing Sebastian who hesitantly tried to take a sip choke on it.

“Only the petals are. The roots are perfectly safe.”

Sebastian glared at the tea as if it was going to kill him at any second between his coughing. Abigail gave him a thorough thump on the back before risking her own life by taking a hearty swig from her mug. She immediately made a rather impressive face of utter disgust, a verbal “blergh” escaping her as she set the cup down.

“That stuff’s shit.”

“It is an acquired taste.” To prove such, he finished the last of his tea without batting an eyelash. Years of building up tolerance made him very resilient to strange tastes and textures and everything in between. Watching someone else take the courage to blindly drink something that he knew would react poorly to was one of the few bright moments in dealing with general humans.

“Are you really a wizard?” Alex asked the dying question, dragging everyone back into the true reason why they were all clustered inside Rasmodius’ home. “I mean, a lot of this stuff is creepy, like, cult stuff.”

“I assure you that I am not a part of any “cult”, Mr. Mullner, nor will I made a blood sacrifice out of you or use your corpses in a ritual.” Rasmodius set his empty cup down, threading his fingers together before him as he cast a look over each one of the young adults. “Magic is not for the light-hearted, nor is it used to amuse children as some parlor trick.”

Just then something fell off one of the many shelves- a book hitting the floor with a dull thump. The sound caused Sam, who had just gingerly sat down on one of the chairs at the table, to stand up with enough force to knock the chair over.

“It was just a book,” Maru said with a slight huff, although her words were mixed with amusement as she moved over to pick it up off the floor. “You know, gravity. It’s easily explainable.”

“It was really convenient though,” Sam sputtered for a bit before fixing his chair, collapsing back into it.

“Maybe it was a ghost!” Abigail grinned, leaning closer to Sebastian who scooted his chair further away to get her out of his personal bubble.

“The likely suspect would be a spirit,” Rasmodius mused, before sighing as yet the same book came toppling down just as Maru turned around to join them at the table, eliciting a small noise of surprise to leave her throat as she snapped her head around. “Most definitely a spirit, then. A Junimo, to be exact.”

“What’s a Junimo?” Abigail asked, highly intrigued while Sebastian said “What’s the difference?”

“A ghost implies something or someone has died,” Rasmodius answered the latter before addressing the first. “And a Junimo is a nature spirit. They’re small, colorful, and relatively harmless, if not an occasional annoyance, as Utu tends to be.”

“You… named it?” Maru was looking at him as if she was questioning his psyche, and Rasmodius couldn’t help but huff and roll his eyes.

“Your farmer friend did, actually.”

“Can we go?” Alex asked quietly before anyone else could continue that particular strain of discussion, his face taking on a curious pallor. “Not to be rude, Mr. Rasmodius, sir, but this place is creepy and I’d rather leave now.”

“But we haven’t proven anything yet!” Abigail groaned. “Come _on_! You’ve got to prove _something_ to these skeptical losers about the crazy things you can do. I’ve seen you _teleport_ for fuck’s sake! Do something like that! And Sam stop touching me it’s not going to make me leave faster.”

“Uh, Abigail, I’m not touching you,” Sam replied slowly, unusually frigid in his seat. “But there’s something touching me…”

“Well, it isn’t me,” Sebastian muttered before shuddering, slapping a hand to the back of his neck. “Maru, your hands are _cold_!”

“It wasn’t me!” she denied, and it was true, as she was still standing by the shelf, her eyes flitting back to the book she returned to its perch as if it was going to fall again. “Okay, maybe we’re just getting too worked up and imagining…things…”

Her words trailed off as she stared at something right behind Rasmodius. The others stared too, and Rasmodius felt, rather belatedly, that his hat had left the top of his head. He tilted it back a little, staring as the hat in question was floating above him in midair.

“Hey, uh, Wizard guy?” Sam murmured. “Are you… doing that?”

“No.” Rasmodius narrowed his eyes, his lips pressing into a thin line. There hadn’t been any spirits nor sprites in his home this evening, and any that would have appeared he would’ve sensed. This had no presence, not like Utu whom he could feel rather than see blip away from his home.

Which meant only one thing.

The hat spiraled up in the air, rising and falling as if it was being tossed. Maru inched a little closer to Sebastian while he and Abigail were staring wide-eyed at the display. “That is… some impressive illusions,” Maru said slowly, but there was no conviction in her voice as it trembled. “Can you make it stop?”

The shadows danced along the walls as the hearth dimmed, a log settling on the coals with a soft crackle. Alex was getting to his feet inch by inch, as if ready to bolt if anything made a threat against him.

“Mr. Rasmodius, please,” Maru whispered, even as both Sam and Sebastian got to their feet as well as the corners of the room darkened, Abigail slowly following them up, although her fear was mixed with curiosity. “This isn’t funny anymore.”

A low, unfamiliar yet familiar chuckle rang out through the air, unable to be blamed on anyone as the hat turned in the air.

“Oh, but I’m having _loads_ of fun,” came a vaguely feminine voice, her tone amused but with a sharpened edge of a knife as the hat settled down onto an emerging head. The figure stood sideways to them, skin a smooth grey and a humanoid form of a dangerously beautiful woman made of soft shadows that licked across her bare flesh, unclothed by anything but the darkness itself that dripped off her form and pooled at her feet.

Long, slender fingers with sharp nail lifted to adjust the hat, her lips curling into a sharp smile full of pointed teeth as she turned a venomous green eye towards them without ever shifting her head.

“We’re having fun, right, _children_?”

Her head suddenly snapped around, and real reason why she kept one side of her face to them was revealed as the other half of her face was entirely skeletonized, the green eyes illuminating the polished white of bone and sharp dog-like teeth as she grinned at them, becoming more and more wolfishly undead before their very eyes.

It was too much for the others, as they all shrieked, the noise making Rasmodius’ ears to ring as they all bolted for the door and ran into the night, the door banging harshly against the stone walls as it groaned in its hinges.

Rasmodius and the unwelcomed spirit stared after them for several seconds before the being straightened up, the shadows melding back into what could be described as flesh yet again, a smile still present.

“I think that went well.”

The wizard merely pinched the bridge of his nose for the second time that evening.


End file.
